visitors

Today is a Friday Finds that works a little different. Usually it’s some random things that I have encountered, but I’ve got a group for you today all focused on Welcoming Church Visitors.

A Reporter’s Journey

Reporter Chris Thompson has been visiting churches around Anchorage Alaska and writing blog posts about it. See: Church Visits main page.

Searching: I’ve been looking for a church that projects relevance to my stage of Christian development. In this quest I have visited and worshiped with many streams of religious persuasion. Assuming this may be an issue for many in the Anchorage area, I offer in this blog brief accounts of my visits. The criteria I use in evaluating my visits are:

Too friendly?

A Vineyard elder writes about his experience visiting churches while on a temporary long term job in a different town: Read The importance of being a welcoming church [source post deleted]. Note that one was cold and clueless, the second one was toooooo friendly.

I didn’t know that it was possible to accuse a church of being too friendly, but I think this church accomplished this feat. We were met by a greeter with a GUSHING welcome. This person then made it her business to introduce us to at least three other people standing in the lobby area, and each of them in turn gave us an extended, overly-friendly greeting, all this while we had our three young kids in tow that we were trying to get checked in to Sunday School! It seemed “fake.”

Improve Your Church Hospitality

Do you want more first time church visitors to come back a second time? Taking care of your hospitality systems can help you keep more of your visitors. I’ve put an ebook together to help you review your hospitality systems.

Let me ask you this?

Think about times when you were a visitor once and what shaped a bad impression of a congregation.

Add your thoughts in the comments below — simply keep church names out of your post.

Improve Your Church Hospitality

Do you want more first time church visitors to come back a second time? Taking care of your hospitality systems can help you keep more of your visitors. I’ve put an ebook together to help you review your hospitality systems

Different ways to greet visitors:

First Presbyterian in Branson MO greets visitors publicly during the service. Read More tips for welcoming a visitor which is their story. It works for them because of the pastor’s skill in greeting people before the service and he makes the greeting time fun.